Reflecting on Rob Reiner and Norman Lear

Like everyone else, I was shocked by the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, allegedly by his son Nick.

Then the tragedy of the death of the film maker and actor got worse thanks to the crass ramblings of our President. I won’t rehash the hateful words of the commander-in-chief.

I’m sure MAGA is already mansplaining as quickly as lucid people are condemning the bloated Hate Yam’s inappropriate commentary. I bet they bring Charlie Kirk into the rhetoric.

Anyway, part of what Reiner represented was our ability to laugh at ourselves, as imagined by Norman Lear. Rather than commenting about any of the painful discourse, here’s a story, inspired by Lear. It really happened in October of 2023.

Chuck Tingley was completing his mural on the Connections Building across the street from Burger King.

The whimsical image is filled with symbolism, about variety, fairness and being welcoming to everyone.

In early October, I stopped at Burger King for coffee with my old Sicilian friends, the dwindling octogenarians who remember when and how things were better.

“What do you think of the new mural across the street?” I asked Tommy, whose last name you would know. He had just finished telling me about the 56 different pills he keeps track of every day that keep him alive.

Here comes the visit from the ghost of Norman Lear.

“Art?” he said. “You call that art? How can you call that art? It doesn’t even have a Madonna on it.

“I look at it. You call it ‘art’. I look at it and you know what I see?

“A Black boy holding a slingshot. And he might be gay!”

Sure enought, the subject is holding a slingshot and the ball has a rainbow on it. I had trouble containing my laughter. It was too soon for empathy. In our lifetimes, stories like that one will be gone -- it was the absurdity of Archie juxtaposed by Meathead.

I reflected on that day and cherished it as a Norman Lear moment.

Rob Reiner was trapped in the middle, with a volume permanently stuck on 11 and a dwarf Stonehenge lowering onto the stage as his mother says “I’ll have what she’s having” and Meathead puts on one sock and one shoe at a time.

As for the death of Reiner, here’s Heather Cox Richardson from this morning. She goes back to a film from 1995. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-15-2025